06 July 2006 Pure indulgence for the four hundred ruggies who flocked to Boston, the 8th American Conference on Oriental Rugs offered a gourmet banquet of rug fare. A remarkable series of exhibitions took centre stage, backed by an enjoyable dealers' fair and a practical minded educational programme. Daniel Shaffer reflects on the event.
In some ways the 8th return of ACOR was the most ambitious so far. Rightly so maybe, since April 2006 saw the event come home to Boston, where the biennial American conference series was launched 16 years ago.
As the years have flown by, the ACOR commercial fair, like its ICOC counterpart, has assumed an ever more pivotal place in the mix. This time there could be few complaints about the quality and variety of goods on offer (see HALI 146). And yet...comparison with the very high standard of the non-selling exhibitions gave at least some conference-goers pause for thought. Passing in review the great depth of the holdings of New England Rug Society members, ACOR visitors were forced to confront the apparent or real gulf between what was once available at entry-level prices and what can be bought by aspiring collectors today. These now well-established private collections, typically assembled over years with characteristic New England thrift, contain in profusion the great village and nomadic rugs and tribal textiles every collector yearns to find – and to afford.
The final tally of twelve NERS exhibitions, all but one on-site, involved more than 450 rugs and textiles (not to mention the promised but eventually cancelled display of 'To Have and to Hold', seen in 'virtual' form on the NERS website). And while the highly sensitive politics of rug society members' loan exhibitions are only too well understood, it is hard to think of more than a handful of items on show that didn't earn inclusion on merit.
The first rugs that I saw were in the light and airy gallery of local rug merchants Landri & Arcari, just fifty yards around the corner from the Park Plaza. 'Celebrations in Wool – Antique Oriental Rugs From Eastern Anatolia' contained some two dozen typical examplesin a variety of formats, from the collections of conference planning committee chair Mark Hopkins and Maine rug dealer/lobsterman Jeff Dworsky. All the appealing idiosyncracies of so-called Yürük and other Anatolian Kurdish rugs (1) were there – quirkily woven, funkily drawn, more often than not mis-shapen, 18th-19th century Kurdish tribal and village rugs with lovely wool and rich colours. Hard to believe, but I was told that some conference-goers failed to find this exhibit throughout the entire ACOR weekend. Their loss!
Back on site, but set apart in the hotel basement, was 'Gems of the Caucasus – Antique Caucasian Carpets from the Rudnick Collection'. Based on prior reputation, this was the most-keenly anticipated of the planned NERS exhibits, a display first mooted for the Washington ICOC in 2004. In Boston we saw about forty pieces, including a lovely classical Dragon carpet fragment, and a fine selection of unusual pre-commercial period pile rugs with a southern bias (4, 10), assembled with a fine disregard of the condition considerations that are important to many collectors of 19th century Caucasian rugs.
Rosalie and Mitch Rudnick's collection certainly lived up to expectations, but like the other ACOR 8 exhibitions it will not live on in a permanent record. The types of Caucasian rugs the Rudnicks favour – Kazaks, Moghans, Genjes, Surahanis, Talishes and the like – with their direct visual appeal, lively geometrics, good wool and blazing colours – are crowd-pleasers, so it is rather sad that a show of this calibre remain unpublished, confined to the vagaries of memory and digital photography, and utterly lost to those who couldn't come to town.
The remaining ten NERS exhibits, ranging from local artist Tom Stocker's four life-size, knot-by-knot, paintings of prayer rugs, to Jeff Spurr's extended survey of lesser-known types of antique Central Asian textiles, were shown in a walk-through labyrinth of more or less interconnected spaces on the hotel's mezzanine level. Within the limitations of a three-day display in a hotel function room (flimsy partitions, paper walls, restricted lighting possibilities and, always, that carpet!), the set design, hanging and lighting were of a high standard, showing how much an experienced museum professional such as Julia Bailey can contribute to the team of willing volunteers who are the essential bedrock of such an event.
A room at one end of the mezzanine was given to Tom Hannaher's 'Demons & Decapitators – the Enigmatic Art of Ancient South American Coca Bags', bringing to the attention of ACORites a compact but mind-broadening non-oriental display of some twenty ch'uspa (2), of varied ages, cultures, materials and techniques. As befits archaeological textiles, condition and even graphic impact were not always paramount, but the bags share fully in the mysterious repertoire of mind-bending figurative iconography common to much early Andean weaving.
In one set of mezzanine rooms we were given an in-depth journey through parts of four individual local collections. Ann Nicholas and Richard Blumenthal presented a wonderful array of south and southwest Persian tribal transport bags, both knotted-pile and flatwoven (5, 6). These were juxtaposed with their collection of photographs showing such bags in use during the past eighty years.
North African weavings were represented at ACOR by the diverse and dramatic 19th and 20th century Berber and other Maghrebi rugs, flatweaves and textiles collected during their time working in Morocco by Alfred and Suzanne Saulniers (13). The selection surprised me both for its dynamic visual qualities, and for the fact that the collectors almost totally omitted examples of the highly eccentric Aït Bou Ichaouen material with which their names have become most closely associated.
Conference supremo Mark Hopkins offered visitors a thought-provoking sampling chosen from his extensive collection of 'Baluch' and related tribal and nomadic rugs from northeast Iran and northwest Afghanistan (11). His exhibit concentrated on mainly smaller pieces – bags, balishts, prayer and other smaller format rugs, many of them woven with a camel-coloured ground – from the more colourful end of the 'Baluch' spectrum.
The fourth individual display consisted of a selection from Gerard Paquin's highly-regarded collection of mainly Turkish (8) and Turkmen rugs, trappings, and fragments (not to mention his controversial 'Ottomanesque' silk embroideries, which were hung separately in another section of the display).
For me, however, the most impressive presentation of all was 'Unusual and Overlooked – Antique Textiles from Central Asia', curated by that most eclectic of world textile hunter-gatherers, Jeff Spurr. Here he augmented a mountain of pieces from his own myriad collection of Inner Asian felts, embroideries, resist-dyed silks, velvets, appliqués, trappings, bands, bags, garments, hats, and accessories, with choice items belonging to other NERS members (3, 7). Multiple examples of various textile and costume types enabled visitors to compare, contrast and classify to their heart's content. They also enabled Spurr, a very hard-working academic cataloguer inclined to perfectionism by profession, and a self-confessed 'splitter' by nature, to paint a picture both deep and broad of the many "unconsidered trifles" that could, and often still can be, snapped-up around the periphery of the antique oriental rug and textile market. And to his eternal credit, on top of preparing good gallery labels, repeated gallery talks, and a Focus Session, he also compiled a small text-only handbook to accompany the exhibit, with a serious introductory essay and long captions.
In a late addition to the exhibition programme originally anticipated in our ACOR preview, it was decided that the quality of NERS holdings of mainstream Turkmen tribal rugs, and their deliberate exclusion from Jeff Spurr's Central Asian textile presentation, warranted a separate display. So, to run alongside the region's less conventional textiles and costume, local Turkomaniacs Yonathan Bard and Jim Adelson set to work to bring together a fine selection of 'Rare and Unusual Turkmen Pile Weavings' (9), focusing wherever possible on pieces of good age and high quality that defy or confound the 'normal' attributions and classifications so beloved of aficionados of Turkmen tribal weaving. To their credit, and not unconnected with Bard's role as editor of the excellent NERS email newsletter, the show is now viewable on the society's website.
As if all the above was not enough for us to enjoy and try to digest, let alone commit to memory in just three days, the whole colourful cornucopia was topped with 'New England Collects'. This was a compendium exhibition, without particular regional or personal theme, of rugs and textiles from the collections of 26 separate NERS members. Here the offerings showed a welcome degree of eclecticism. From a superb Rasht appliqué and conventional small format Persian town rugs, they ranged through Baluch prayer rugs, Turkmen bags and trappings, Persian nomadic pack bands and some superb 19th century Caucasian village rugs, kilims and fragments (12). Then there was more exotic fare, both oriental (an Indian phulkari, a Kazakh tus kiis and an Algerian embroidery), and non-oriental (West African beaded cache-sexe, an Amish quilt, Panamanian molas, a Sihuas tapestry panel). What characterised it all was the sheer quality of what was displayed.
Sadly space does not allow anything but the most cursory mention of the educational programme, which as is ACOR's way, was heavily biased to hand-on, show-and-tell-type presentations. Exceptions to this included Elizabeth Barber's plenary lecture, which may have laid to rest once and for all the notion that there could have been woollen kilims at Çatal Hüyük, and Jürg Rageth's comprehensive account of the application of C-14 testing to carpet and textile study. But like the exhibitions, these too are ephemeral, as there are no plans to publish. |
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